Acknowledging my Inner Joyful Homemaker
Three years ago, I took a Habit Coach Certification course from coach.me so I’d feel qualified to give people advice about cleaning their houses.
I’ve been cleaning house since I was a child. Like, seriously cleaning house. I was born in 1973. My mom was a devotee of Pam & Peggy — the Sidetracked Home Executives (From Pigpen to Paradise) sisters who taught 80’s ladies to use index cards to organize their way to a spotless living environment, and she cranked it up a notch by adding a few cents’ value to each card so that my brother and I could earn a dollar or two each week by scrubbing and polishing. While my elementary school friends were reading Teen Beat, I snuck copies of Good Housekeeping into my bedroom.
I also have no lack of knowledge about coaching. I’ve been doing corporate training and communication coaching since around the turn of the century. In the decade before the cert course I finished a Ph.D. that was focused on coaching, during which I completed multiple coach training courses so I could write competently about them. It is fair to say that I am an expert in the art and science of coaching. I’ll go even further and say I am a particularly engaging expert, and have high confidence in almost every situation involving training and coaching.
Why the crisis in confidence when it comes to keeping house? My house is my pride and joy, right? I mean, except for the little mess that accumulates sometimes next to my chair in the library. Mm, and I can get a little uneven around dinner.
Wait, no I’m not, that’s an explicit agreement.
Ok, it was kind of made under duress.
But…well, there it is, isn’t it? Home is exactly where we’re vulnerable. Home is where we unmask, if we’re lucky. It’s the place that bears witness to the parts of us that no one else sees, and sometimes, our most hidden impulses are reflected back at us through our homes.
Coaching might reveal that part of me to others. Advertising that I was coaching for home care might open it up to the wide, wide world. Because of course, the moment I post something, all of the wide, wide world would flock to read it and judge me.
Deep breath. Suppress the urge to delete all of this.
Here’s a little story that seems relevant, although it’s not The Story. When I was a little kid in the 80’s, I lived outside of a small town, where my family went to church in a little congregation, and we had a little loose leaf directory of all the families in the membership. I loved to flip through it — there was a photo of the family, with everyone’s name, birthday, and what kind of work they did. Most of the women’s names said “homemaker” next to them. I asked my dad once what job a homemaker did.
“Nothing,” he replied.
I have a very clear memory of feeling a bit frozen in that moment. I loved my dad. I adored him. He loved me. He loved my mom. He loved everyone. And I also knew the women we went to church with. And I knew they didn’t do “nothing.” In fact, I knew them to be the drivers of almost everything in my life. I didn’t know what to say or feel.
That moment didn’t devastate me or ruin my relationship with my father. It just resurfaces once in a while when I wonder why I became so secretive about my passion for homecare and why the word “homemaker” disappeared from my vocabulary for thirty years or so. Maybe it primed me to notice each time I heard someone devalue the work that women (and all people) do to care for homes and other spaces where people stay, live, and work.
I won’t spend more time writing about this, because many people already have covered this ground elegantly and thoroughly. If you care about this issue, you probably already know. If you care and didn’t know — people have already done a great job and you can spend the rest of the day getting righteously angry about it. And if you want to argue about it, I am not the one. I do not have one single moment of energy to spare for engagement on the contra stance, but write your own piece and I’m sure you’ll find people who do.
The focus here is not on the overall culture of devaluation of “women’s work” because for me it isn’t the point. Rather, it is that I swam in that water. I breathed that air. I took it into my little queer Gen X heart as piece of information about what I needed to do to matter.
I did the things.
My life has been full. My life has been full of adventure, of educational and professional accomplishments, experiences, mishaps, and spinouts. It’s a life, like any life. As I approach 50, though, there is one small voice that persistently calls to me and reminds me that I have pushed back at her for all this time. I consider the habit coaching course I took three years ago to affirm her, the little web page I started to build, and then left forgotten.
Why do I hesitate, still, to acknowledge that I am a homemaker?
Because you don’t know if it matters or is important. Because maybe you’re no good at it anyway. Because it’s not an interesting interest. Thanks for setting feminism back 50 years.
ok, inner critic, relax.
The rituals of home care make me happy. They make me feel whole. Waking up to put away clean dishes and start a load of laundry while the kettle boils gives me morning cheer. Standing at the opening to my home’s intimate space in early evening, my heart is filled with joy as I imagine my family soon to enter. Timing a quick tidy and candle lighting just right so that the flush has settled before my wife pulls into the driveway feels like perfection. Entering my sacred space for a ritual and knowing it will be still and serene with everything in its place is essential to my mental health. Unfailingly, people enter my home and share comments on feelings of pleasure, comfort, and “energy.” Each time they do, I have that moment of realization that no, not everyone feels like I do. And for a moment, I am compelled to share, to invite others in to join in the delight.
So here’s me, determined today to hit “Publish” before I can delete it all. I’m turning 50 soon, I really can’t just keep being afraid of what could happen.
Hi, I’m Ash. I’m a homemaker. It’s nice to meet you.
